Oh and Something Else

Lucy got back from her new job in childcare. She made my dinner and then we noticed that she smelt of baby poo. I didn't finish it.

Something that Annoyed me Today

For a year or so now, the airlines have been claiming victimization over climate change. their usual retort is "people have to fly, there is not a lot we can do to be more efficient". I hear the same thing from transport companies I work with all of the time. I can't be arsed to find the reference, but I am pretty sure that bloke from EasyJet is the guy I read about a lot.

I read this in the paper today which annoyed me significantly. Aparently some of the airline companies have decided that in the wake of high fuel prices, they should fly slower (and thus more efficiently), and that this doesn't affect the timeliness of the flights at all. Which begs the question ... why the bloody hell didn't they do it in the first place? It may be a miniscule saving, but to be honest - its pretty damn easy!

Just goes to show that companies wont do anything unless you hit them in the pocket. 

Trying to be Original

With it looking like we may not be in Australia as long we may have first anticipated, we are on a bit of a mission to do as many things as we can each weekend that we wouldn't be able to do back in the UK. This weekend we did a fair bit of cycling, hitting Manly on Saturday and the Royal National Park today.

The photo above was taken at Shelley beach near Manly. I took about 5 trying to get an artistic shot until Lucy pointed out that the two girls sitting in front of us may find it a little pervy...

Winter In Paradise

When the inhabitants of England talk about Australia, it is as some kind of ever sunny, eternally hot eurphoric paradise inhabited by tanned 'clothing averse' blondes and racist, overweight country folk.

Certainly, during the summer time the sun beats down with a ferocity such as would never be experienced in Europe (something to do with missing Ozone), and the many beautiful white beaches are full of backpackers and locals, sunbathing, BBQing and surfing. Unfortunately during most of this period, I was at work, sitting in an air conditioned office on the 6th floor of a city centre office block at least 10 yards from the nearest window.

And then more recently Summer has turned into Winter (apparently it is the other way round in the Southern Hemisphere in case you were wondering). The days now are shorter than they ever were in England - it gets dark here at around 4.30pm.

I have begun to realise that it was not just the temperature that used to depress me during the ling British winter. It was the shortness of the days and the fact that I never got to see the daylight. I for one would definitely petition to work from around 5pm to 2am and have my days free.

And it is cold here...

Well that is actually as bit of a lie. It's not 'proper' cold here. It doesn't actually get much below 15 (celcius) as far as I can tell.

But the 'Sydneysiders' still wrap up in their hats and scarves and complain about the bitter cold. Their British roots cause them to talk about the weather incessantly. The schoolkids on the bus marvel at the sight of condensation on the bus windows and draw pictures and scrawl their names in the mornings.

And there is a reason why...

Basically most typical houses and units (flats / apartments) in Sydney (or at least every one that I have seen) are very badly designed. They have no insulation (which would help keep you cool in the summer and warm in the winter) and no double glazing.

Heating is generally provided by little electric heaters (of the kind that were pretty much phased out of UK houses for their costliness), there are few gas heating systems (even though east coast gas is relatively cheap here). Or, as in the case of our unit, there is no heating at all, so you are forced to buy multiple little crappy electric heaters. Basically the units that I have seen are pretty much energy efficiency disaster areas.

Added to this Electricity here is generated almost entirely from coal, a fact that contributes to Australia being one of the highest emitters of CO2 (per head) in the world. And the units are freezing!

Learn Some Life Skills

I always understood the need for a school uniform (perhaps more so as an adult than as a kid having to wear one). It’s a leveler of society. It doesn’t matter whether your parents are investment bankers or binmen, you all have to wear the same ridiculous garb. You find ways to customize it. Our’s involved pulling the white thread out of the tie, or wearing it small end out

However, in the more expensive private schools in Sydney (of which there are a few in North Sydney), they take the term ‘ridiculous garb’ to a whole new level! The kids get on my bus dressed in grey trousers, tie and blazer (I think we managed to get rid of our blazers in around 1992 at my school), which they wear neatly and appropriately (which I have never seen a kid do in England). But more than this, they have to wear the most stupid looking horrendous straw hats, complete with stripey black and white bands around the sides. The kind that look they might befit a 1920’s butcher. Complete with the tell tale white Ipod headphones they all have, they may as well have ‘mug me I’m soft’ written across their foreheads.

These kids are like nothing I have known, every morning when I get on the bus, they all line up perfectly ready to alight, and wait for the adults (of which I am apparently one now) to get on first – and they always get up to give you a seat. I just want to grab them by the shoulders and tell them ‘have a bit of a backbone! Rebel a little bit. Get on the bus first. You are wasting your childhood – go out a mug a few pensioners at night’. Well maybe not that last one.

This is a picture

This is a picture of my friends.

More specifically, this is a picture of my friends on a sun kissed beach in Porto (Portugal).

More specifically still, this is a picture of my friends on a sun kissed beach in Porto (Portugal) last week each wearing t-shirts with pictures of my face on them (which were given by Lucy on my UK leaving do).

Today I am homesick.

A Blogging Right of Passage

Something that makes me smile, and seemingly something that all bloggers seem to do at some point - a brief look into the google searches that have brought people to my site (and therefore the searches for which my blog ranks highly on google):

"Rabbit farm technology" obviously after my secret insights into advanced cloning techniques.

"Cheers big ears" for some reason quite a few people have searched for this? I have unfortunately been relegated to 8th on google for this search from my previous third.

"Nice man photos" Nice photos of a man, or photos of a nice man? Should I be concerned?

"Will my boy hurt his babies?" this one is definitely a little worrying.

 "What they say about big ears" always with the big ears!

"Lombok mushrooms" If this person is going to Lombok, they are unlikely to miss the 'special mushrooms'

"Gili Islands ATM" definitely sympathise with this person and can categorically tell them that there is no ATM on the Gili Islands as we found out on our visit last November.

"Lying and stealing at work" maybe expecting a 'how to' guide

"What is a 60 degree angle?" erm...

"Hotel Jam-Jaman" (searched for on Indonesian google). hotel Jam Jaman is Indonesian for pay-by-the-hour hotel if you are interested in knowing what this person was after.

"Rabbit gadgets." 

House Swap

So here it is. Despite Lucy only having been in the country for a month, recently we have been giving some serious consideration to doing a little more travel come this September and essentially swapping this:

 

(the spectacular harbour views of Sydney)

For this:

(the grimy Tinsley cooling towers of Sheffield, looking unusually attractive in this picture):

Madness, you may cry. Thousands of Brits every year flock to the sunny coasts of Australia, and yet more sit in rainy Yorkshire longing for that supposed laid back easy lifestyle.

We have our reasons, both personal and professional as to why we think it may be time to leave in a few months (once we have some cash).

Professionally, Lucy has to get herself a good education job, to get experience for the course she hopes to start in September 09 and it may prove a little difficult over here due to qualification requirements.

For myself the job I have got is far from perfect, and if I was to stay in Sydney, I would certainly move on to another company. I also have a few job offers in the UK.

But our reasons for thinking about leaving extend beyond the merely practical - I also have to admit to struggling with the Australian way of doing things that I have experienced. The emphasis in engineering consulting here seems to be to heavily dominated by generating written outputs. Personally,  I am used to working with people and numbers. Without going into what I do for a living, I like to focus on the development and implementation of projects and struggle somewhat when faced with Australian decision making processes which seem to take so long. Processes which cause me a fair amount of professional frustration.

Whilst appreciating that this may be my own experience only, there are a large number of (both American and European) expats here who constantly bemoan the same thing. 

In terms of Sydney, it is absolutely the most beautiful city I have been to as I have said before. The harbour is amazing and in the summer sunshine, there is nothing better than BBQ's and lounging around at Shelly beach.

Only summer draws to an end here, and the evenings draw short (it gets dark around 4.30pm at the moment). The weather is not cold, but not warm.

When you take away the warm weather and sun from Sydney you are left with very much a hard working business city. Strict licensing laws seem to have led to a lack of independent pubs, bars and cafe's (of the type you may associate with Melbourne). 

Not that I am complaining. I have had some brilliant experiences and to be able to have to opportunity to come here in the first place is a privilege. Nothing is set in stone, but I think we will spend the next few months trying to see as much of Oz as possible before any potential return.

Special Guest Post

Well, I’ve volunteered to take the plunge and enter the world of blogging. Not sure how great I’ll be but I’ll give it a whirl!

I’m Lucy, Sam’s long suffering (!) girlfriend, the brains behind the brawn, the one who has given up the mean streets of Manchester (apologies to anyone from Manchester, maybe that was just my street!) to move out to sunny Sydney. I have been here 3 weeks now.

The big surprise went really well. Sam’s face was a picture! I managed to meet his friends before hand and then I hid out till Sam was in the restaurant. I cannot believe how nervous I was! I was shaking like a leaf when I walked in and was just so overwhelmed when I saw him sitting there, I couldn’t even say anything I just stood at the table and waited for him to look up. He just looked SO shocked and I think it took about 10 seconds for him to register it was actually me standing there in front of him.

I think the whole ‘surprise’ experience brought home to us both how hard these past 8 months have been. Okay, so I haven’t been wallowing but my friends and family will tell you that I certainly haven’t had that sparkle in my eyes and spring in my step. But now we are back together again, and it feels great having my best friend back with me again. (Okay we’re a soppy couple!).

The past 3 weeks I have been looking for a job, which hasn’t been easy at all. I am trying to get work in the education sector as I hope to go on to be an education psychologist and assumed that by having good educational and work experiences I would be able to find work easily. Apparently teaching staff is the one thing they do not need in Sydney, and have a list of 20, 000 qualified teachers all waiting for full time employment. So this makes things a little difficult.

But I can’t complain I’m in Sydney! I’m seeing lots of Australia, I’m back with Sam, I get to read and chill out all day, and the more I put off work, the more Sam has to spoil me and pay my way! So it’s really a win win situation!! And anyway I have been applying for a lot of jobs so something is bound to turn up eventually, hopefully!

Govindas

Time for  random review:

Last night Lucy and I made it to Govindas. A brilliant little place tucked away between the strip clubs and brothels of Kings Cross. The basic premise is that you go there and have a vegetarian buffet, then you go to the floor above and they have loads of sofa/beds and cushions everywhere and you watch a film on the big screen.

The food was really good except for the fact that both Lucy and I have the tendancy to massively overeat when faced with a buffet situation, and all through the film I had to lay in a certain position so as not to puke.

The film was 'Gone Baby Gone', which I would recommend. As much of a fan as I am of Kevin Smith fans and all that. I really think Bed Affleck should quit acting and stick to directing. Though his brother (the lead role) isn't at all bad.

Excellent twists in this one. All in all 3 and a half Rabbit Raisins for the experience (appreciated that everybody outside of Australia probably had this movie about 3 months ago).

Fight!

More consistent bloggers and regular users of the Interweb have probably heard of this one a number of times. When we were having a discussion at work about whether it was terrajoules or terajoules and the stupid spellchecker couldn't help us out, a colleague suggested that we use Googlefight to sort our problem. Basically the site compares how many hits on Google each word gets and then has a little graphic that hows a little fight to demonstrate the winner. The victor was the one we assumed to be the correct spelling.

So I spent the next half an hour on this and fought a number of words against one another. Unfortunately allthatcomeswithit whoops rabbitconfusedwithraisins by 1630 to 413 and Dan Hughes Beats Sam Hughes by 611,000 to 563,000 which was quite disappointing.

This could be something to do with the fact that Dan Hughes is an important conductor on the Pennsylvania Underground Railroad, Sam Hughes was the mere Canadian Minister for defence during World War 1 and apparently made some poor procurement decisions!?

Good looking guy though.

Anyone else got a Wiki counterpart?

The Artist

You may have heard of 'The Artist' from such stories of mine as 'The Artist and the Moped' or 'Ah the Nook' or my personal favourite 'Biarro Alto'. The Artist is a source of constant entertainment to the rest of us, in a kind of 'what's going to happen to him next kind of way'.

Everyone has one of these mates. The one who prefers to drink beer rather than go to work (don't we all) has managed to shirk responsibility for quite some time, and the one we all want to be when sitting in the office on those miserable days tapping away at some meaningless spreadsheet.

I stumbled across something recently when perusing Facebook (actually Lucy was perusing, I try to give it a wide berth nowadays). Something which was a pretty pleasant enlightenment ... The Artist is actually pretty good at art! Actually, no - he is really good.

He has always had a kind of an analytical but artistic mind of the kind that I can't quite really describe. He has always loved images of machinery and the way it looks and the emotions that it evokes  (probably born out of a childhood obsession with Warhammer 40k). I think this picture is really brilliant:

And some more examples:

I reckon if he could raise his game from the current 1 picture per year, he might have something. What do you think?

Baptism of Fire

I have been somewhat neglecting my little portion of the interweb of late. Lucy has been here an we have been pretty busy running around, climbing cycling etc. This weekend we headed to the Manly Food and Wine Festival. We ate food and drank wine. Two of my favourite thing to do in the world (apart from drinking wine - I am not a big fan). Anyway, the sun was shining and the food was thai. So all good.

So on the the "Baptism of Fire"! 

Lucy has been cycling for approximately 1 week. During this time she has made it to my work and to the climbing wall and ever to Manly and back (which is about 8km or so). 

So today we thought we would get out of the city and have a bit of a cycle around in the sunshine. Unfortunately being the kind of a guy that I am, I can't just do a little cycle ride. We caught a train up to the central coast and had a bit of a ride around it pretty hilly up there and we got quite tired. Stopping at the local tourist information we spoke to a woman who told us that you could get a ferry from nearby and sail across to Palm Beach. I had ridden quite close to this before.

This was like a red rag to a bull for me. I suddenly came up with the bright idea of sailing to Palm Beach and riding the 'short distance' home.

We set off from the ferry terminal and it started to rain ... and it never stopped. 60km later and we were home. Soaked through to the bone. Needless to say I was not in the good books. Anyway I managed to take a couple of photos before the rains... including one of some grazing cockatoos.